


Float off the Ground

by orphan_account



Category: 1984 - George Orwell
Genre: Dystopia, F/M, Internalised Transphobia, Other, Torture, Trans Female Character, Transphobia, not an au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-26 11:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21373648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Sometimes, he saw them, their banners hoisted far above them with white flagpoles rested on their pale arms, their long hair trailing behind them, their sashes and skirts highlighting the curves on their bodies, their dainty legs, their brightened eyelashes, their feminine lips. Everybody in his office, the members keeping close besides him, seemed to see them fit only for a cause lower than their own, looking at them with a level of disdain for those not as devoted as they."What do you think of them, hey?" they'd ask, a mocking voice in their tone that assured him that they'd be the next ones sent off to be killed."If it is for Big Brother, I like the idea," he mused, "though i must say, the promiscuity is not good for anybody."He still wasn't quite sure what he thought about them. Maybe it was admiration for their dedication. Maybe it was attraction, in the way that a Party member needed to do his duty and create more for his cause.Maybe, he thought, the wavering idea gently passing in his skull, it was jealousy.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Float off the Ground

He didn't know when it started, really.

Between being born in a household desperate to hold on to the views of the past and then being created anew in a future that was made with no views at all, he'd always had a number of issues with himself which he refused to address. Anything could be hidden under pressure. As long as he didn't let himself slip, nobody could ever tell that there was anything freakish about him.

Of course, that's what he did. He worked when they needed him to, shouted when they needed him to, rested when they needed him to. Maybe they'd eventually get him, but hey, what could they do? He was already fundamentally broken. They likely wouldn't be able to fix somebody as freakish as him. Big Brother was the greatest leader he could ask for, but he wasn't a miracle worker. 

Sometimes, he saw them, their banners hoisted far above them with white flagpoles rested on their pale arms, their long hair trailing behind them, their sashes and skirts highlighting the curves on their bodies, their dainty legs, their brightened eyelashes, their feminine lips. Everybody in his office, the members keeping close besides him, seemed to see them fit only for a cause lower than their own, looking at them with a level of disdain for those not as devoted as they.

"What do you think of them, hey?" they'd ask, a mocking voice in their tone that assured him that they'd be the next ones sent off to be killed.

"If it is for Big Brother, I like the idea," he mused, "though i must say, the promiscuity is not good for anybody."

He still wasn't quite sure what he thought about them. Maybe it was admiration for their dedication. Maybe it was attraction, in the way that a Party member needed to do his duty and create more for his cause.

Maybe, he thought, the wavering idea gently passing in his skull, it was jealousy. 

He liked that thought a little more than the rest. When it came into his mind, he watched it like a bubble crossing over a great green field. An old memory resurfaced itself in his brain when he thought of it, of getting beaten by some boys in his year in school, of coming home bloodied and crying because he apparently picked out the wrong clothing to wear that day. It was a memory of a time long past, where his biggest worry was whether he would be able to rinse the blood from the silky fabric, or whether he'd be able to skip P.E. the next day by hiding in the changing room cubicle.

Now, the bullies couldn't hurt him. The bullies were all dead, and a greater, more powerful entity had stepped in instead. He watched the bubble drift away from the bright, green field, and felt no remorse or longing for its return as it did so. After all, it was just a passing thought. Nowadays, he knew it was unwise and, quite frankly, gross to let that kind of thing slide.

He found someone like him in the Ministry one day- a freak, a mistake. She told him that she didn't want to be a woman. She told him, tears in her eyes, blood running down her upper lip, that she'd give anything to be him.

He electrocuted her. He stripped her naked, he had his police agents flog her to the ground. He stood her by the mirror, pulling at her deteriorating body, grabbing her breasts, almost destroyed by the fabric she used to flatten them down, kicking her spine, broken by the pressure of the binding, pulling her hair, which came out in fistfuls, clawing at her bright, red, feminine lips, until at last she admitted that, if Big Brother needed her as a woman, she could be a woman, maybe, just this once.

"Big Brother will be happy to hear that," he told her, his face free of emotion.

She didn't respond. That was probably good.

It at least meant that he could never tell her of the fleeting thought passing him again, reminding him of olden times, of telling her that he'd give anything to be her, too.

These thoughts rested in his head, never to be spoken of, never to be acted upon, merely as fleeting ideas. His purpose was to work, shout, and sleep. Circus acts, crossdressers, trannies, mistakes, those were all things of the past. He was on Big Brother's side. He was creating the future.

He found someone else in the Ministry, too. It was a man, but he wasn't like him- he was secure in himself. Of course, everybody was always secure in themselves until he broke them down, but this one wasn't like the rest.

The man had told him what everyone had- that the Party couldn't control him, that nobody could control what was in his mind. He'd had a great many conversations with the criminal- many intellectual, discussing the meaning of the party, the meaning of life, whom exactly the two of them really were.

"As I said," he had told the man one day, "this place was made to cure you, to help you. I can save you. I will make you perfect."

He wasn't quite sure that the man had heard him, at first. He looked as if he were half-dead, as if the conversation the two were having was only happening to him in a dream state. But then, as if he was never hurt, his response came. "But then, who will save you?"

That bubble never seemed to leave him. Instead, it circled around the field, bumping into flowers and blades of grass here and there, yet never really bothering him. He thought about that man often, too, about the years upon years he had spent trying to catch him for thoughtcrime. Sometimes, the bubbles intertwined, and he thought to himself that maybe, if he were a woman, and he and the man were in a world without Big Brother, a place without darkness, then they might speak more about themselves, about how they really felt, with no fear or shame or worry that the world would crumble and trap them both beneath it. This was a sick fantasy, of course. It was vomit-inducing, and the mere thought made him want to gut himself, to lay his body out in front of Big Brother and beg him to remove what was wrong with him.

Yet he watched it when it came, and let it go when it went, and carried on admiring, but not touching, pondering, but never plotting.

He got a call when the man was shot. The man had been fully converted. He hadn't an inch of the wiseness that he'd had in the conversations the two of them had shared in the cell, apparently.

"We shot him while he was watching the war victory," they told him through the phone. 

"Thoughtcrime really does change a person," he said.

He hoped they'd take it differently to how he had meant it. He wished for a moment that he'd had more time with the man, that maybe, he could have told him of his anomalous thoughts, the ideas that he never acted upon. Maybe he would have taken it to his grave. Maybe nobody would ever have known. 

He watched that bubble float away, melting into the bright blue skyline. Well, it was too late now, he thought, melancholy rising in him for no more than a second. The man was gone, and he was still broken.

Soon enough, it came, just as he was expecting it to. He was in bed, not asleep, but not awake, bubbles passing through his field as he dozed. He thought of the girls in the league, of the bullies in his childhood, of the wise man, of the not-woman, of himself, or whatever brain accident must have happened to him for his mind to work in the way that it did. In all of his thought, he almost didn't notice the footsteps making their way to his bedroom.

When the thought police member opened the door, he smiled, rising from his bed expectantly.

"You're under arrest," the thought police member told him.

"I've been waiting," he responded, smiling despite everything.

Before he could be knocked out, one more bubble drifted across his field. It was large, and full of many ideas, ideas that never even came to him, ideas of what he could do as a woman, without Big Brother, without expectations or dictations or rules on what he could and couldn't do. There seemed to be so much happiness radiating from the space, and he watched the bubble gently float around his space, until it floated away once more. A passing thought, a fleeting idea, a mere thought. It didn't mean anything. His idiotic, simple-minded, disgusting ideals didn't mean anything.

And, most importantly, he thought to himself as he fell to the ground, he didn't mean anything, either.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all!
> 
> Yes, this was made as a vent. It’s orphaned for a reason. I doubt this will mean much to anybody, but it’s just a little thing I wrote after a particularly bad day and felt like putting in here.
> 
> Before you get mad about this in the tag, the story is heavily implied to be about actual characters IN 1984, but no names are ever given, so it’s technically up to interpretation. (I’m going to be honest and say that the main reason for this is that I don’t want people to give me hell for my trans headcanons, especially not in such an obscure fandom as this!)
> 
> Anywho, hoped you enjoyed this fanfic, if you could!  
Goodbye, reader! :)


End file.
